Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Is it true that there are no straight lines in nature?

Today was a rainy day. Oh hum. We still got out in it and trained. Got a little wet, but not so much wet that when we were done, little Fin jumped in the pool to cool off (no swiming, she's is a step kinda gal). One of the things I thought about today was straight lines and the dogs path.

My friend sent me the video tapes from the Derrett seminar. As best as I can determine, I've got some serious work ahead of me.

One area I sometimes have trouble is where to put my FC. If I follow the rule that says, "Change of arm indicates change of direction" this means I would NEVER put a front cross on a straight line. Looking at the course map, this means I wouldn't put a FC between 1 and 2 or 2 and 3. But what about between 4 and 5?


In our seminar, participants felt they shouldn't put a FC between 4 and 5 because it was a straight line (I am proud to say, I got this one right...I'm not talking about all of the ones I got wrong!). The truth is that the dogs actually turn between 4 and 5 because the dogs path is the red dotted line due to the turn from 3. So I would want to be in FC position at 5 as the dog is committed to 4.

The front cross is a tricky one for me. I am slower than my dog. My dog is faster than me. What amazed me in this box work is that I was able to get to the positions when I trusted my dog. Turns were wide mind ya (we are working on this) but I can see how there is hope in my future of indicating a line and moving myself to the next position to indicate the next line.

3 comments:

Elf said...

Good for you! I commented on Laura's post about how, in my experience, people have trouble with the concept of the dog's path and where it's straight and where it isn't. Nice to put an example up like this.

team small dog said...

This was that Dogs Should Have an Independant 270 one! Send out to 270 run run run run run diagonal line TURN!

vici whisner said...

Yep, this exercise relies on that independent 270. I was happy to see most dogs had no trouble with that, it was the turn after 4 that dogs had trouble with cause handlers were late.